Coming Clear
"Angel" is at the beginning of her fourth night with us, and we're beginning to get a handle on the issues. It also helps that The Wife had a chance to talk to her old social worker and got a little more background info.This little girl has been literally treated more like an animal than anything else. She has mostly raised herself to this point...her mother basically showed her the VCR and set food in front of her a couple times a day. Other than that, it sounds like she was basically on her own since she came out of infancy.
Her previous foster home, who had her for two months or more, were astonished at her progress. We are astonished at her progress just in the four days she's been here. It's visible in how she plays with her Animaniacs book, how she relates to our dogs, how she deals with bedtime (her least favorite time of day) and how she already seems to be picking up on the fact that tantrums will not get any results she likes.
Another child came to visit the other day and made the mistake of holding a ball she wanted, and got a scratched face for his trouble. Socialization and things like sharing are definitely NOT in her arsenal yet...but they will be. I guarantee you they will be if they'll just give us some TIME with this one...and it looks like they will.
"Josie" seems to absolutely adore "Angel". She loves doing her hair and it's one of the few chores around here she'll do without even being asked. Ironically, she's also full of advice on things we should do to better parent "Angel", making it very hard to keep a straight face, avoid mocking her, and generally not be the ass that I can really be sometimes. Thus far, I've just been taking pleasure in the fact that "Josie" seems to actually want to go home and is on her best behavior, because if she was still acting up while we were trying to
I really have nothing truly insightful or amusing to share with you tonight. I'm not sure if that's because there really is nothing in my life at the moment worth trotting out or if it's because I just don't have the mental sharpness for it after several very concentrated days of work and parenting, but I thought I should update you.
You see, I blog for fun, but I also blog out of self-defense. I'm quite sure that one of these days I'll take one too many days off from blogging, and my sister is going to drive up here and beat the crap out of me for not sufficiently entertaining her.
And nobody wants that.
posted by Dan @ 8:33 PM
1 Comments:
Hope your sister doesn't have to do that. :-) It sound slike you got "Angel" the same day we got our new boys. They are having a VERY hard time still, but are also only 1 and 2. Good luck with Angel. She seems like she will come around for you.
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